With the help of my father, I also succeeded to get the literature I needed for my work. In general, the search for adequate literature as well as the getting of it is not very easy for students.

First we have to know where and how to seek. Second we have to come to know which literature is understandable for us as students with relatively poor knowledge, and this, often without haven’t yet seen the literature. Third we have to choose out of this a sample that gives us all information we need for our work. And fourth we have to find out if the information given in this material is reliable. For all this, help from experts is needed, and teachers are often overtaxed with this task.

I myself have begun my work with an internet search. You can find much in the internet about future energy issues, especially also very actual information. But it is not good structured, and out of the waste information only a small part is usable for a Facharbeit.

A big problem, especially in future energy issues, is that you haven’t got the guarantee that the facts presented are objective true. Even if you get your information out of serious books (we luckily have a lot of them at home) you cannot be sure if the information given is reliable. Special people who work for the industry or want to sell something may have interest to falsify information. Thus you can find many contradictory reports or fact presentations and you do not know which one you can really trust.

My teacher could not help me in this question. He is not an expert in this field (how could he be?). The only thing I could do, was to collect first all information I could get and compare the single presentations in order to find similar information given by different authorities. But even then you cannot be satisfied because you still do not know if this information is right.

Another point is, that you have to collect much different information in order to get this way just a little security that the information you use in your work is reliable, and also in order to get all the needed information for the work. The internet sources are not enough. So it is necessary to have the possibility to use good libraries which have books about your working theme. But you cannot find such libraries everywhere. Normally only libraries of universities with nature or engineering sciences or have sufficient technical literature. With respect to future energy issues there exists a special financial problem: Actually university libraries in Germany have not got enough financial resources to be all up to date in fields developing as fast as that one of renewable energies.

But even if the desired literature is available in an university library in the surrounding area of your home, there exists a further organizational problem. In Birkenfeld for example the next university library with sufficient literature is about 60 km away, if you travel by car (but the most school students cannot travel by car!).

The library of the Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld is up to now not completely built up and comparably small. With trains and busses the way is even longer and costs a lot of time. I myself have every day at least until half past three in the afternoon lessons at school, and thus it is nearly impossible to visit a university library.